


Where You Lay Your Head

by brinnanza



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Things you said under the stars and in the grass</i>
</p><p> </p><p>The night is warm, the people long allies, and the moons full, so they spread their sleeping bags out in the grassy clearing just outside the village and camp under the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where You Lay Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by number six [here](http://brinnanza.tumblr.com/post/111919930176/send-me-a-ship-and-one-of-these-and-ill-write-a). Thanks to Aadarshinah for the beta read.

The night is warm, the people long allies, and the moons full, so they spread their sleeping bags out in the grassy clearing just outside the village and camp under the stars.

Rodney puts in a token protest about his back and the dirt and the bugs (of which there are few if any), and Ronon says, “Relax, McKay. It’s good for you.”

“What’s good for mountain men is not good for scientists with delicate constitutions,” grouses McKay. They fall into a familiar pattern of good-natured bickering, but they both fall silent when they finally lie back.

They gaze up the bright wash of stars on a world that has never seen light pollution. After several minutes, John raises a hand to point out a single star, brilliant white next to its neighbors. “That’s home,” he says, and Teyla knows immediately that he means the star where Atlantis rests, home for all four of them, where they all found family.

“That’s where we are now,” says Rodney matter-of-factly. He studies the sky and then points. “The original Lantea is there.” The star is barely visible against the inky black sky.

Ronon points out a star on the other side of their field of view. “Sateda,” he says, voice low.

Teyla has never had much time for stargazing, but there is one she can always pick out. “And there is Athos,” she says quietly. The original home of her people has been lost to them for years, overrun by wraith and time, and she feels a brief tug of longing at its loss.

Rodney reaches over and nudges her arm a little to the left. “And that’s New Athos,” he tells her.

She smiles to herself and pictures her son and his father. Atlantis is about six hours ahead of this world, so it is about midday on New Athos. Kanaan is probably feeding Torren his lunch or perhaps soothing him with a lullaby for his nap.

She always misses her child when she is away from him, of course, but she knows he is well cared for. When Torren is on New Athos with his father, the entire village watches after him, as they do all Athosian children. Even when she is forced to leave him with someone on Atlantis, there are always plenty of volunteers to look after her smiling toddler for a few hours.

Torren will grow up safe and loved, protected from the wraith more than has ever been possible in Teyla’s lifetime. He will know two homes, the people of Atlantis, and the people of Athos. He will never struggle for a place to belong, not after everything Teyla has done and been through.

Teyla is grateful for such community. She has always had to fight for her place at the table--with the Tau’ri because to them she is an alien and with the Athosians because she bears the blood taint, because she is Teyla, She Who Walks Through Gates.

She has found it for herself though. Maybe not with her people, something she continually mourns. They see her as Lantean now, an emissary of the Athosians but away too often to really be one of them. She has found it with her team, John and Rodney, and Ronon. They are her community, her home.

Ronon starts pointing out Satedan constellations, named for mythological heroes and great warriors, and tells their stories. Athosian star patterns are somewhat more agrarian, based on myths like Caronus, who lifted a great boulder so a stream could flow and irrigate crops. But they have their fair share of warriors too, like Attaria, who slew a hundred wraith and then let herself be cut down to allow others to escape.

She tells these stories to her team. John tells of Earth’s constellations, Hercules and Andromeda and Perseus. They are tales of bravery and cunning, like like the Athosian and Satedan ones, but they do not feature the wraith. 

Teyla sometimes forgets how the people of Earth have not experienced the wraith. She has heard tales of the Goa’uld, creatures that once enslaved most of the Milky Way, but even they did not target Earth. John and Rodney’s people do not fear the open sky, the possibility of too much progress.

Rodney cuts into John’s story and says, “That’s ridiculous. The Greeks were known to exaggerate, and anything that’s not exaggerated is just plain invented.”

“That doesn’t make ‘em any less cool,” John argues, nudging Rodney with his elbow.

“That’s not the point anyway,” says Ronon. “If they’re like Satedan myths, they’re not supposed to be literal. They’re supposed to teach a lesson.”

“I know that.” Rodney’s about to offer an additional rebuttal, but he’s stopped by a huge yawn that gets passed to each of them in turn.

“We should get some sleep,” says John, as if he’s just noticed the hour.

“That is an excellent idea,” Teyla says, feeling the heavy pull of fatigue at her eyelids, in her limbs. It feels like a lifetime ago that she might have feared sleeping in the open like this, afraid of wraith darts and culling beams.

But Ronon lies beside her here, with Rodney to her other side and John just beyond him. The four of them are more than capable of dispatching anything that may lurk in the shadows, and the village is a short walk away.

They sleep.


End file.
